


Children of the Omnic Crisis

by neferlio



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-09 19:12:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10419273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neferlio/pseuds/neferlio
Summary: All Ana ever wanted for her daughter was to be normal and happy and safe. Her wish never came true, and ever since Fareeha joined Overwatch, it seemed farther away than ever.





	

All Ana ever wanted for her daughter was to be normal and happy and safe.

When she found out she was pregnant all these years back, she had been ecstatic. She wanted everything: a stable, loving family. A peaceful world. It was the year 2043 - what could happen?

Then came the Omnic Crisis, and Ana was amidst it all. Fareeha, too, just by extension. She never had a stable family live. Only heroic stories of those who made it out of the battlefield alive. 

Surprisingly (or not?) Fareeha had wanted all of this for herself, and now here they were, living on the Overwatch ship, the Orca, on their way to their next mission. 

It might come with the territory of being a sharpshooter, but Ana often found herself watching her teammates while sitting at the table in the corner with a cup of tea. Right now, Fareeha and Jack - or the person Jack had become, Soldier 76 - were with her in the main bay of the ship checking their weapons. 

Tracer had just whipped out her phone and was calling home. The former test pilot had formed a habit of telling everybody she loved them before heading out for a mission, because she claimed that the last words she had said to her partner before the Slipstream Accident were: "Don't you dare buy that bloody expensive scarf, luv!" Ana doubted Tracer was capable of such strong language, it was probably more like: "Don't be upset, I just don't like the color of that scarf." But if it was true, then Tracer's guilty conscience would surely have led to her buying the largest collection of expensive scarfs in the entire world just for her spouse.

Back to the team. 

Mercy, Reinhardt and his mechanic, Brigitte, where sitting at a table and quietly talking in German. Ana was jealous of them, because they could talk in their native language. Of course she always had Fareeha to talk Arabic to, but her daughter had a tendency to answer in (her likewise native) English.

"Du hättest seinen kleinen Kopf riechen sollen. Neugeborene riechen so gut," Reinhardt explained with a dreamy expression. Ana wondered what they were talking about. Since they were talking in German, she guessed probably beer or cars. It sounded angry at last. 

And Ana knew how racist that sounded. But she was too old to care. Everybody was a racist anyways. They were on a mission just last night in King's Row, and the graffiti in the underground stations were a living testament to that fact. As long as such thoughts stayed firmly inside her mind and she never acted on them she was one of the better persons. Sad, maybe. But true.

"Er ist aber schon acht Monate alt," Brigitte laughed at something, and Mercy laughed with her, "Was ist mit dir, Geli? Wird es bei dir nicht auch langsam Zeit für Nachwuchs? Tick tack?" German was a funny language.

"Es ist kompliziert," Mercy said, and these were the first words Ana understood. Not even the sentence itself, but the other healer's voice and her facial expression. Mercy did not want to talk about it, and you were better of fighting against Talon on your own than saying another word now.

Reinhardt and Brigitte seemed to think so, too, since both just nodded and looked awkwardly away.

"Ich liebe dich," Tracer was back from wherever she had gone to in a blink of the eye (pun not intended, but the girl would have loved it), and she was firmly hugging Mercy now. So the former pilot was back to saying her "I love you's" to literally everybody. The spunky girl had even learned it in multiple languages just to be sure her friends understood.

(Even though Ana remembered Mercy explaining multiple times that "ich liebe dich" was not meant to be said towards friends, but lovers. Tracer had answered with "But I do love you guys!" and kept on saying the wrong words. Back then Ana had advised Mercy to pick her battles and that it was the thought that counted, and so Tracer kept using the wrong phrase.)

After Tracer had hugged both Brigitte and Reinhardt muttering the same words, she ran over to hug Fareeha, then she came over to Ana herself, telling each of them: "Ana baħibbik!" 

After that she blinked out of the doorway, and Ana heard "Jag älskar dig", so she figured Tracer had hug attacked Torbjörn.

"We will be arriving at our destination in 10 minutes," Athena said through their intercom, and suddenly there was moving all around. Everyone who did not belong to the current mission moved out of the way towards the upper decks, while the six destined agents started to get ready in the main control room.

The girls, Tracer, Mercy and Fareeha, stood at the big door, Soldier 76 and Reinhardt a bit off, deep in their own (no doubt tactical) discussion.

"Hey dad, can Fareeha come over to play after our field trip," Tracer suddenly called over to the men.

The first time something like that had happened, Ana had been confused. Now it had become customary: Tracer and her Fareeha had a tendency to play pretend - like they were just some high schoolers going on a field trip. Other agents their age usually joined in their play, and even Mercy sometimes played with them.

It had been a while until Ana had realized: These were the children of the first Omnic Crisis. They had lost friends, siblings and sometimes even their parents during the crisis and the following civil commotions. Many had no or only very little education because of it. Many had experienced hunger and thirst and being homeless. And still here they were, soldiers in a war they had not started, risking life and limb for the greater good. It was no wonder they liked to pretend to be the children they never had the opportunity to be.

"Lena, you know very well it's lights out at 2200 hours," Soldier 76 answered her. Ana was not sure if he did not realize what the girls were doing, or if he tried his best dad impression. Maybe he just did not care either way. 

"But... but daaad," Tracer whined, "we want to paint our nails and braid our hair and talk about boys." Fareeha snorted with laughter next to her. Ana understood the joke. Tracer did not like boys, probably not even men. Fareeha had not been very clear when she had explained it to her mother.

Mercy grabbed Fareehas arm with a rather childish giggle: "Oh, Spatzeli, do you have a crush on someone? Tell me!" It seemed like the younger medic did not understand the joke.

"Fareeha and her crush. Sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-," Tracer started to sing, hopping around the other two girls, but was interrupted by Fareeha, who started strutting over to her mother.

"Mooom! The other kids are teasing me again," she whined, sat next to her and slid down until her chin was about the height of the table top.

Ana would have loved to have this kind of playful conversation with a carefree Fareeha back when she was 16. Still she took the opportunity: "Did you try shooting them?"

"Mom," her daughter whined again, "of course. One of them has a guardian angel. The other is the guardian an-"

"We are there," Soldier 76 yelled over them from where he stood, figuring that their conversation was not important enough. Fareeha was agreeing with him, because she wiggled out of her seat next to Ana, grabbed her mother's shoulder and squeezed lightly, nodding to her, before putting her helmet on. It was her way of saying "if either of us doesn't make it - I love you"; at least that is what Ana assumed.

It was not long until all of them were on their way to the payload. 

"So Thor and I will defend the payload," Soldier 76 explained nodding towards Reinhardt (who had by far the coolest callsign of all the Overwatch agents), "Horus will have our backs. Pharah you're scouting our flanks from above. Take Mercy with you. Tracer will scout from below, but please stay near either of the medics." 

The younger half of their group saluted and turned around to walk across from them. They knew Fareeha would soon start to use her thrusters to get up in the air and Mercy would follow her.

The girls were not even out of sight when the radio buzzed to life. "Just one question? Are we supposed to form pairs and hold hands," it was Tracer's ridiculous question, so they were back to playing.

"No," Soldier 76 answered simply.

"Requesting clarification," this time it was Fareeha's voice, "but we are allowed to?"

"This channel is for the mission," Soldier 76 stated, obviously getting impatient.

"Don't worry, luv," Tracer replied right back, "we'll make sure you know when it's serious."

"So are we," Fareeha questioned again.

This time Soldier 76 gave Ana a suffering gaze. She had seen this facial expression a million times on Fareeha's father. It meant: "Do something. She's your daughter." And so Ana did.

"One word from either of you three girls, and you won't have dessert tonight," she told them as strictly as possible. Reinhardt laughed. Soldier 76 just groaned. But it worked; the communication devices remained silent.

"I think they are afraid," Ana said when it became clear the girls were done calling them, "that's why they pretend to be children."

The group walked in silence for a while, until Soldier 76 answered: "I know. But pretending won't save them from being killed. This war is real."

Ana nodded to that, and Reinhardt looked grim again (but to be fair, he almost always did).

Taking the payload was not much of a problem. With the three of them safely stored behind Reinhardt's shield, firing with decades of training, even the most advanced groups of bandits had nothing on them. One day they would realize that fact and group up, but Ana hoped she would not see that day.

They were making good progress on getting the payload to the destination, where they were supposed to rendezvous with the Orca again to load their cargo up, when their radio suddenly rustled to life: "Bingo Group. Bingo Group. This is Tracer" 

Ana glanced at Soldier 76. She had disliked their call sign from the beginning, but now having a radio transmission actually directed to them it sounded not funny but morbid.

"Copy. What's up?"

"Man down. Requesting Horus. Sending coordinates." While the message itself was direct and emotionless, Ana felt a shiver run down her spine. Just as she had said, Tracer made clear this was no courtesy call, and so something really bad must have happened. (The last call before she had passed out due to a poison mine the day before consisted of a giggle and a "Widowmaker trumped".) Moreover - she was specifically requesting her, not a medic, which suggested they had a major wound Soldier 76's biotic field could not heal. 

It was probably Mercy who was down, but Ana could not rule out that her Fareeha was hurt, too. Still she forced the question down and answered: "On my way."

"Roger," Tracer answered back; then there was silence. The window to ask who was hurt and what had happened had closed.

"We're all going," Soldier 76 decided, pointing in the direction the girls' signals were coming from, and Reinhardt stomped away, pushing the payload with them, but notably a lot faster than before. 

Ana tried hard not to, but her thoughts went right to the assumption that her daughter was hurt or worse. Why else would Tracer call for help? Pharah was the leader of their little group. What had been the last she had said to Fareeha? Right, no dessert. And before that, she had advised her to shoot her friends. And what had Fareeha done? She had squeezed her shoulder - that was an "I love you", right? It was not "mom, I'm scared" or "get me out of here", was it? What kind of mother would send her daughter to her grave like she had done?

They arrived at the coordinates agonizing minutes later. It was an abandoned garage that was defended by Tracer. Since she would not have been able to hold herself in a fair fight against the 5 bandits that were currently coming at her, she was just trying to push them back.

A salve of her pistols, a pulse bomb, a blink in the opposite direction so that the attackers ran towards her for a moment. Nethertheless, she was not equipped to handle them. At all.

"They're in there," Tracer yelled, and they could hear it from both her and the radio at the same time, only the communication devices broadcasted her strained voice and labored breath a lot better.

Reinhardt left the payload, so he and Soldier 76 could move over to help her, and there was no doubt in Ana's mind that they would be able to defeat their opponents even if she was to help the wounded inside the building. So she went.

When she entered the garage a projectile went right by her left ear. 

"Mom? Sorry", she heard a hasty excuse even before she could see her daughter sitting in a dark corner of the room.

Fareeha looked horrible. The hair on the left side of her head was gone, as were parts of her ear. Instead there was dark red blood caked with soot. Her helmet stood next to her, part of its left side completely broken off. As was the shoulder pad of her left arm, which shakily held a gun Ana did not recognize at once. It must have been Mercy's.

"Fareeha, my daughter", the mother exclaimed in shock and rushed over. She had to school herself, because if her daughter was still sitting upright, she was probably fine, and the superficial wounds looked like nothing a good medic could not repair.

But Fareeha shook her head when her mother reached for it: "No! She first!" She nodded to the ground, and Ana's breath stopped.

She had not even seen Mercy lying there with her head resting in Fareeha's lap, since her besooted clothes and face blended well with the dirty concrete. The blonde woman's right side seemed to have been the target of an explosive shot - while the armor had taken a lot of the force, there was an open wound. Thankfully the heat had cauterized it, and even though most of her torso was covered in something dark, her blood had thankfully stayed inside her body for the most part. 

"She's going to be okay", Ana said automatically when she used her biotic medicine on Mercy. Weirdly enough the nanobots avoided the lying woman, and instead moved to both of the other two.

"Her! Heal her", Fareeha cried while trying unsuccessfully to remove the nanobots from her burnt face.

Ana just nodded somberly and took out her grenade, tossing it to the ground next to her. Upon impact, both her and her daughter were engulfed in a bright yellow light. However the little bots kept clear of Mercy yet again.

There was no denying what the problem was, but Ana needed to be sure and bent over Mercy's face. Nothing. She could not see her chest moving up and down, she could not hear her breathing, and she could not feel even the slightest bit of air moving on her cheek. The other doctor was not breathing, and judging from the nanobots avoidance had not been for a while.

Ana glanced up at her daughter with worry, but not for their fallen teammate. Tears were sliding down her daughter's face, creating clear path against her dirty skin. Of course Fareeha knew that nanobots could only heal living things, which meant she was starting to realize that Mercy was gone. No, Angela was gone; the dead had no need for callsigns.

"Fareeha, I…", Ana started, but was interrupted rudely.

"No! Heal her", Fareeha was crying freely now, something her mother had not seen since 20 years ago, when some kid named Amal had broken her heart, "please, mom!"

Of course Fareeha must have lost some of her men during her fights, after all she had been a lieutenant before joining Overwatch and had commanded a lot of people. However as far Ana was concerned, Fareeha had not lost someone dear since joining the military. Since losing her mother. Maybe that was why she had never made friends with her soldiers. Be that as it may, now she had lost someone under her command, someone she cared for, and there was a good chance she would feel guilty for whatever had happened for the rest of her life. 

But there was no time to mourn yet - the fight was still raging and their own lives were at stake. Angela's body would have to wait. Fareeha, or better yet, Pharah would have to swallow her grief until they were safe again.

"Habībtá, Angela is…", the mother started, but the daughter just held her shaky hand (that was still holding the gun) into the air to get her to stop. It broke her heart to see her child like this.

"She's not", Fareeha explained, with emphasis on the last word, "she's not. She can't be." The gun fell to the concrete when she started to hide her face in her hands. "No. She can't. She is not. She… she is a hero. Heroes never die. She said so. So she isn't. She can't!"

Ana sat up at that. Heroes never die! Fareeha was right. Quickly she searched the body in front of her, hoping against hope that Angela had brought her most prized weapon into the field for this rather dull mission.

Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw her daughter glancing at her through her fingers, but she was not sure she could even see clearly through her swollen eyes. 

Another moment later, she found the grenade. It looked a lot like hers, which made sense since all of them were created by Angela. Still the Swiss woman's grenades were special. 

"Helden sterben nicht", Ana mumbled what she remembered Angela saying, then threw the grenade. These nanobots avoided mother and daughter, and went right to work on Angela.. Now she was glowing, like the angel she often seemed to be. 

With a gasp Angela sat up, looking at her surroundings with utter confusion. Ana had seen that a lot lately. The body of a newly resurrected person would jerk so violently most of them ended up standing on their own feet - only to crumble down when their mind catched up with what had happened. 

Fareeha, who had stopped her crying when her mother had thrown the grenade, threw her arms around the other woman's neck and started crying even worse than before.

Ana could not understand what the two of them were mumbling into each other's shoulders, but judging from the fact that it seemed to be a wild blend of Arabic, English and German (and was that a bit of French?) neither could they. 

"Don't ever do that again", was the first full sentence of Fareeha she could actually understand, even though her daughter was still hugging the other woman tightly and still had her head buried in the crook of her neck.

Just then the ground vibrated, which announced that Reinhardt entered the room a moment later, shield deployed, followed by a curios Tracer. When the later saw the two women hugging, she quickly blinked over to join in the embrace.

"I was so worried for ya, luv", the former pilot said.

"We actually came to see if any of you could help us with the wave of enemies pushing into our direction", Reinhardt explained, even though his face showed there was nothing he liked to do more than to come over and hug Mercy as well.

Pharah stood next to them in an instance and saluted the German knight: "I'm ready for action." She rubbed her bloodshot eyes with the palm of her hand to remove the remaining tears. "...now.

"We will complete our mission", Ana agreed while standing up with the help of her rifle.

Since Tracer was still hugging Mercy, she was the one to help the medic up. Still she could not hold in her relieved giggle and quibbed: "Last one out there's a rotten egg!"

"You want to stay out of the fight, Geli", Reinhardt asked the freshly resurrected woman with worry, but Ana already knew what the answer would be.

"I'll be watching over you." 

These were the last words before the team Girl Scouts (not surprisingly Tracer's idea, too) grouped up again.

"Were you crying", Tracer teased Fareeha when they were on their way out.

Ana's daughter snuffled loudly: "Yeah, I thought Geli left me alone with you!"

Tracer laughed at that, but it sounded fake. Once outside Pharah jumped into the air using her rockets, Mercy followed suit, while Tracer stayed with the Bingo Group behind Reinhardt's shield.

The fight went on, but there were no more casualties that day - at least not on their side. 

 

After returning to their ship and the debriefing Ana was on her way out when Mercy called for her.

"I… I wanted to thank you for saving my life", the younger medic stammered quit uncharacteristically. It seemed the good Dr. Ziegler was not used to being on the receiving end of a resurrection.

"Don't worry about it", Ana replied at once, "you have saved mine more than once." Mercy forced a small smile, still awkward, so the older woman continued: "I hope I can trust you to continue watching over my life?"

Mercy was in the process of the first of many vigorous nods, when she saw what Ana was looking at. Of course she would not have asked to somehow prolong the life of a 60-year-old. Ana was looking at Fareeha, her daughter, her life. She was the one Mercy should keep watching over.

"I will, I promise", the younger medic answered with a slight smile, and Ana just nodded back at her and turned to reside back to her table in the main area of the ship. Fareeha came some moments after and brought her a cup of tea.

"Mom", she said and then frowned, obviously unsure about something. Her hand rubbed over the left side of her head, which was now cleanly shaven. There was a thick bandage over her ear. They would be able to grow it back in time. It took a long time before she added in Arabic: "Just… you know… thanks. And I love you." She gave an awkward little smile.

"Habībtá, don't ever doubt I love you, too", Ana answered and was actually hurt at how relieved her daughter looked. She had really messed up by pretending to be dead, but she would do better now.

Since the conversation seemed over, Fareeha sauntered over to the table where Mercy and Torbjörn had settled down and were trying to fix the Valkyrie and Raptora suits. She stared at Mercy in concentration for a while, until the Swiss woman took notice, and only then Fareeha said: "Ich. Liebe. Dich." 

Mercy laughed at that: "I know. But I love you, too, Spatzeli." So she had learned to pick her fights and was not correcting everybody's German anymore.

The two girls grinned at each other for some moments, but then Fareeha turned to Torbjörn and opened her mouth, so he started to panick. "Just so you know. If you tell me you love me I'm going to throw your suit overboard." He punctuated his statement by hitting said suit with his fist.

"That's okay", Fareeha answered laughing, "because that's Angela's suit." The women laughed, and low and behold, the Swede joined in a moment after.

Ana went back to reminisced about everything. All she ever wanted for her Fareeha was normalcy. But if her "normal" was multi-lingual "I love you"s, pretending to be on a field trip while on a military mission and friends consisting of a a giggling pilot, a dwarf and an actual real-life guardian angel - who was Ana to judge? At least Fareeha seemed happy enough. 

And one day in the future, she would be safe, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Non-English Sentences:
> 
> "Du hättest seinen kleinen Kopfe riechen sollen. Neugeborene riechen so gut."  
> \- [German] You should have smelled his little head. Newborns smell so good!  
> "Er ist aber schon acht Monate alt."  
> \- [German] But he is already eight months old.  
> "Was ist mit dir, Geli? Wird es bei dir nicht auch langsam Zeit für Nachwuchs? Tick tack?"  
> \- [German] What about you, Geli (nickname for "Angela")? Isn't it time for you to have some children on your own? Tick tock?"  
> "Es ist kompliziert"  
> \- [German] It's complicated.  
> "Ich liebe dich"  
> \- [German] I love you.  
> "Ana baħibbik!"  
> \- [Arabic] I love you.  
> "Jag älskar dig"  
> \- [Swedish] I love you.  
> "Spatzeli"  
> \- [Swiss] little sparrow (term of endearment)  
> "Habībtá"  
> \- [Arabic] love (term of endearment)


End file.
